#forest #salvage
Tag: forest
#garden #forest #clearing
#roofing #framing #woodwork #forest #art
#framing #roofing #woodwork #problem #forest
#design #clearing #septicarea #forest #flower #trail #fruit
We are so glad we found out about this course which is offered by the county extension program. It ran over 2 sessions which were 2.5 hours each. A link to the course is provided below:
https://extension.umd.edu/woodland/woods-your-backyard
Jonathan Kays spoke for the most part; but he had other people come in to talk about converting turf to forest, attracting wildlife to the backyard forest and invasive species. I cannot tell enough good things about the sessions. The handouts given during the course are thoughtfully written. They even provided a book on identifying a forest tree based on the leaf type. It is kind of addictive and we hope to identify and mark as many trees on our property as possible.
The course itself introduced us to the world of succession, wildlife habitats, uses of backyard woods, recreation possibilities; water sources, planning, forest thinning, invasive versus native species; common plants/trees, forest stewardship programs for small forest owners (1-10acres) and resources to get saplings/mapping software/soil information. All the speakers were very knowledgeable and passionate about forest conservation. Most of them were land owners themselves and were actually living what they were preaching. The terrain navigator software recommended by the ‘Forests for the Bay’ website is very useful and is something we hope to use to tag and locate features/markers on our land. Even though we plan on getting a forest officer to come to our land and talk to us 
individually on how to protect and utilize the forest on our land; the course opened our eyes to the issues involved. Now we feel better prepared to ask the forest officer questions and to maximize the use of the time we have with him.
During the course we had to complete an assignment which listed various activities with the ultimate aim of having a plan and schedule for things we need to do for the upkeep of our forest. I have attached the workbook below. Since our priority is to build the house, vegetable and fruit garden, we will work on the forest related activities on an as-possible basis for the first 3 years. Our first and foremost item on that list would be to get some of the invasive species that are growing on our land under control – Japanese stillgrass and Tree-of-Heaven.
I have also added a slideshow below of our visit to the Ag research center in Derwood, MD. We hope to be attending an evening course there from Jan-April that is about Small Farms. This would prepare us well for planting our vegetables and herbs next year. A link to the course is provided below:
https://extension.umd.edu/montgomery-county/agriculture/small-farm-program
#visit #extension
[embeddoc url=”https://peachcobblair.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/AlanGirijaLandActivities.xlsx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft”]
#learning #visit #forest #farming
Let me start this post with a confession – neither Alan nor I have even half a green thumb between us. So we are going to need some help and that help is in the form of the ‘Small Farms’ program that is part of the county extension program. This link shows the schedule of the workshops held in 2015 as part of this program. The 2017 schedule is yet to be posted; but it is expected to run over the months of January to April. Perfectly timed for us to start our planting in the Spring of 2017.
The extension program should also be a good source of information for working with bee-hives.
We were introduced to the Seed Exchange movement by Ianto Evans from the Cob Cottage Company and have located the Maryland/DC chapter. We need to check if we can obtain seeds without contributing anything since this operates on a Barter system. Since we don’t have seeds to contribute, we might take food for the participants.
We have approached Sun Nurseries and talked to its owner – an extremely nice and knowledgeable gentleman. He talked to us at length about the issues involved in purchasing fruit trees and things we need to watch out for. We plan to finalize on the list of trees and place an order with him by October of this year. Apparently this land was used as an orchard long ago and we hope to talk to the owner on Settlement Day to find out more about the history and details of the fruits grown and where they were planted on the land.
The seller’s agent was kind enough to inform us about the Forest Stewardship program. Since we do not want to destroy any of the forestry on the land, we are good candidates for this program. The Forest officer will be meeting up with us sometime after settlement to discuss the details of the program. If we agree to go ahead, he will visit us again for a detailed walk through and discussion of the trees/species growing on the land.
Then there is the small issue of preparing the land for planting the vegetables and fruit trees. The area that we have earmarked for planting the fruit trees used to house a small building that served as the shop for the orchard. We dug down a little on the ground and found that some of the foundation stones are still present. Not an insurmountable problem; but we might end up picking topsoil from the county dump for planting the fruit trees. We will also pick up mulch from the dump; but we might consider creating some ourselves from all the dead wood lying about – we have our eye on an old wood chipper that we saw at an Architectural Salvage store.
We also need to setup fences to protect our gardens from critters and deer. You can look up more details about the detailed scheduling here and watch us track the expenses incurred over here.
The slide below shows some of my attempts at vegetable gardening over the past few years.
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